Tag Archives: Eddie Two Hawks

With his post, Eddie provided me with an opportunity to share and reflect on a Mary Oliver‘s poem Wild Geese.

The poem is about belonging to the larger family we each live within. It is also about being who we are and not fretting about what that might mean. Certainly, it is essential to living to reflect on who we are and who we are becoming, but we sometimes we let this become greater than the life we are living.

I think to experience the world and living most fully I need to be present and mindful of what I am experiencing and letting go in each moment. This is challenging, as the human mind scurries here and there, but, when I let go and am present, the riches are enriching and add to the becoming in ways I cannot predict and caculate in advance.

I took this picture at Radium Hot Springs during an evening walk while on retreat there. I was surrounded by all the beauty nature has to offer in these moments.

This is a wonderful quote from Buddha. Our thoughts and emotions are fleeting and impermanent. When we accept them as such, we are able to let go and suffer less. To be present in each moment, mindful of ourselves and the world. is accepting ourselves as we are in that moment.

Last night, I pressed Our Grandmother from Eddie Two Hawks. In my comments, I mentioned Wendell Berry and the way I understand place in his writing. Wendell Berry’s work is used by the deep ecology movement which in many ways is not a movement. It is a way of life. For years, I critiqued the environmental movement as a corporate movement with many of the same characteristics of the business they criticized. Wendell Berry, similar to all good farmers, values the land. He speaks about as if it were living. It is not separate from us, but a part of us. When I think about this, it makes local and community environmental work incredibly important. It decries the corporate pillaging that goes on both sides of the equation.

Wendell Berry speaks of the land as a living and animate thing. This makes sense. The plants we grow happen in the healthy, which comes from the same root as whole, ecosystem. When we see ourselves embedded in this ecosystem and not overloads, it changes our relationship with nature. Alex commented the word nature comes from a word meaning birth. When certain parts of the ecosystem are damaged made, unwhole and unhealthy, the birth itself cannot be healthy.

Each contribution we make adds something to the world we live in. It is when we see ourselves as part of the world and nature that we make the greatest contributions to community. We are stewards, serving the world in loving ways. This is another analogy for the thinking of the world as grandmother. We treat our grandmothers with love.